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New Combat Actions: Defend Another and Sacrifice
Defend Another As a standard action, you may declare that you are defending adjacent charges. Anyone attacking a target through a square adjacent to you or that you threaten with a shield must beat an opposed attack roll. The AC bonus of your shield, if any, applies to this roll. If you fail this check by five or less, you take the damage instead of your intended target. If you are not wielding a shield, you always take the damage from a ranged attack. If you block a ranged touch spell, such as a ray, you are treated as the target of the spell as though successfully hit. You are considered flat-footed while Defending Another, denying you your dexterity bonus to AC and CMD and preventing you from taking Attacks of Opportunity unless you have Combat Reflexes or similar. Sacrifice As an immediate action, you may intercept an attack or spell targeted at an ally. You may move up to five feet to do so, or up to ten if you choose to end your movement prone. You must move to a square the attack is passing through, potentially including your ally's square; if you end your movement in an occupied square, you begin your next turn prone. You take all the effects of the attack or spell as though you had been the original target, and do not receive your dexterity bonus to AC, but are not subject to precision damage from this attack. New Feats Improved Defend Another Prerequisites: BAB 1+ You are deftly competent in your protection of others. While defending another, you may move up to your speed throughout the round to intercept attacks on your charges, as long as you do not leave a square adjacent to your charges. This movement counts against your movement for your next turn. Greater Defend Another Prerequisites: Improved Defend Another, BAB 6+ You are an unassailable bastion for those under your protection. While defending another, you are no longer considered flat-footed. Additionally, whenever someone attacks one of your charges, you may take an attack of opportunity against the attacker (counting against your number of attacks of opportunity for the round). Notes These new combat options address the lack of defensive options in Pathfinder. If a Level 20 Fighter wants to protect a Level 1 Commoner from a Level 10 Fighter, the Commoner is more-or-less doomed unless the Level 20 Fighter has invested in an inefficient, expensive feat chain (which would still not even be a guarantee of safety), has somehow manipulated the battlefield in a fashion not readily accessible given their class features, or has otherwise established something crazy with a tower shield and the cover rules, none of which are particularly thematic or reasonable. The design of Defend Another is such that shields become more useful, and individuals with high BAB are rewarded with another avenue to express their combat prowess. At the same time, Sacrifice allows any character to definitively block an attack with their body. The narrative representation of these options will vary greatly. Sacrifice can involve a calm sidestep by an armored juggernaut into the jaws of a wolf, or the desperate dive of a Level 5 Expert protecting the object of her higher-level affection from a CR appropriate threat. Defend Another can involve decisively blocking an attack on someone else with a shield or harassing and out-maneuvering an incoming opponent (remember: a medium character doesn't physically take up a whole five-foot square, and can be assumed to be performing fancy footwork over the course of a 6-second round if engaged in physical combat even if they don't move). This makes the anemic, expensive defensive options in Pathfinder somewhat obsolete: Bodyguard, which allows you to Aid Another with an AoO to grant a whopping +2 to AC, and In Harm's Way, which lets you burn an immediate action to eat a successful attack if you've done that already. No one took those or really has reason to take them, so no toes should be stepped on. This also obsoletes Suicidal, a Tiefling trait that works only once per day, and acts like a weaker version of Sacrifice. There may be some glitches or unforeseen consequences--we'll address those if and when they present themselves. To answer the perhaps-inevitable question: Why can't you decisively parry attacks on yourself in the same manner? Defend Another only works for protecting others because it accounts for the attacker being focused on the target being protected. Protecting oneself to the exclusion of anything else is modeled by Total Defense and certain special class features. Category:Reference Category:Homebrew